An Inconvenient Season
by nebroadwe
Summary: Mangaverse. Seven years after the Promised Day, Ed's past comes looking for him, but finds Winry instead.
1. Chapter 1

_This is for my father, who advised me that villains never fight fair._

* * *

The boiler roused itself with a groan and a slow succession of clangs, like a blacksmith reluctantly beating out horseshoes the morning after a bender. Startled, Winry Elric blotted her case notes, dropped her pen and muttered one of her grandmother's favorite workshop epithets. One day she'd take a wrench (or maybe a sledgehammer) to the radiators of the A-1 Automail Clinic and shut them up for good.

_Ooh, please -- may I?_

Her gaze fell briefly upon the black leather tool-bag on the floor beside her desk ... but temptation yielded to reason: neither she nor the clinic could afford the time and parts needed to do the job properly. _"Don't start what you can't finish" -- right, Granny?_ Instead, Winry relieved her feelings by tearing the ruined leaf into shreds and lobbing a pale shell-burst into the wastebasket.

The pipes hammered on as she recopied her notes onto a fresh sheet, and a welcome warmth seeped into the room. Pulling her feet out of her shoes, Winry swiveled her chair around to tuck her toes under the radiator beneath the dark window. West City hadn't seen a winter this cold in a long time, though the letters page of the _Inquirer_ had been divided for weeks on the question of whether it could be called the coldest in living memory. Elderly correspondents submitted competing accounts of the blizzard of seventy-four, after which the drifts were piled as high as a horse's withers, and the ice storms of sixty-seven that cut the telegraph wires, stopped the trains and almost led to a food riot in Corn Street. (On cue, Winry's stomach grumbled; reaching back, she grabbed the last of her bread-cheese-and-pickle sandwich from the blotter and downed it in a single bite.) The only thing the letter-writers could agree upon was that no one under forty had ever seen a _real_ winter, and that all this whining about a touch of sleet or a dusting of snow betrayed a degeneration of the national character -- just like the rise of hedonism, the decline of proper manners, and President Grumman's spineless policy of negotiating border disputes rather than giving those Drakkie bastards a good thumping.

The wind sobbed in the sashes and dashed a spatter of rain against the panes. Rubbing one foot on top of the other, Winry turned back to her desk. This winter was only her second in the west, so she kept out of the debate, taking her colleagues' word for it that the number of clients presenting with port-site chilblains was abnormally high. _All I can say is that it wasn't like this last year._ Used to Riesenbuhl's raw winters, she'd smiled at her neighbors' excitement when damp snow squalls crowned fenceposts and street-lamps with woolly hats, lending even the dullest business district a picture-postcard charm. Less charming slush at street-level had melted by day to freeze overnight, until the impotent scrape of shovels became the city's reveille. Then the ice storms had begun and anything that thrust skyward -- branch, mast, or frame -- quickly accumulated a burden glittering and deadly. Trees came down, electric wires snapped, and Ed stopped deriding Winry's investment in candles as _romantic,_ though he still groused that their light was hardly adequate to study by. _If I'd known what we were in for, she thought, I'd have bought a lot more._ Candles, like lamp oil, rock salt and coal, had grown dear as the new year fussed in its colicky infancy.

The metaphor brought a half-smile to her lips; her left hand gingerly kneaded her belly as her right continued to make notes. She and Ed hadn't planned to start a family so soon -- not until he'd finished college, at least -- but what was it Lan Fan had used to say? _It is man's to scheme, but heaven's to accomplish,_ that was it. Ed had put it more rudely, of course, when Winry had confided her suspicions to him. _What, __**now**__?_ he'd blurted out. _Whose idea was that?_ But before she could decide whether to hit him or laugh at his poleaxed expression, he'd shaken his head as if to settle his wits and stumbled on, _I mean, we -- you -- we should find out for sure, right? And then -- I dunno -- buy a cradle and stuff?_

She'd leaned over to hug him then and been surprised when he returned the embrace with less than his usual abandon. _Ed?_

_Sorry,_ he'd answered, kissing her. _You're not -- you're all right?_

_I'm fine,_ she'd said firmly. _Everything's going to be fine._

She'd held to that in every discussion since, and Ed's stupefaction had eventually given way to cautious cheer, though he hadn't yet conquered the impulse to treat her like an ice-coated tree limb -- something reliable and familiar turned fragile and strange. Winry uncrossed her ankles and straightened her spine. She didn't feel fragile at all, or anything out of the ordinary yet, except sometimes nervous. _And hungrier,_ she added, pausing in her work to brush the breadcrumbs on the blotter into a small pile. _Dizzy now and then._ As she swept the crumbs into the wastebasket, she smiled again, crookedly. _Embarrassed by all the peeing._ She hadn't begun to show, which made it difficult to justify monopolizing the clinic's toilet without getting into explanations she wasn't ready to make.

They hadn't told anyone the news thus far, not even Granny or Al; she'd persuaded Ed to wait until the baby quickened, with the blessing of the very discreet midwife his careful inquiries at the hospital had turned up. Mrs. Roda was reassuringly brisk and kind, but her placid forehead always creased whenever her patient's household circumstances came up. Winry tried her best not to sound hapless (or as if she were pleading for a reduced fee) and the midwife never criticized her plan to continue working as long as possible and to return to the clinic as soon as she was able. But Mrs. Roda had also pointedly inquired whether a relative or friend might be available to help Winry after the birth. _A new mother isn't an invalid, of course, but an infant requires a lot of care, and an extra pair of hands can make a big difference ..._

_Oh, my grandmother would come, if I asked,_ Winry had answered, without mentioning that she was unlikely to do so. Granny was past seventy now -- still hale, of course, but it seemed unfair to have her make an exhausting cross-country journey unless they really couldn't handle things themselves. _And where would we put her up?_ Winry didn't even have to imagine her husband's horror at the idea of Pinako Rockbell sleeping on the couch in their kitchen-_cum_-sitting room -- it had already ended their one fight over the issue, right before his mid-year exams, and he hadn't broached the topic since.

As for friends ... Winry turned over a new leaf, the hush of the empty clinic as audible as the bollixed radiators in her ears. _I can't ask Mrs. Hughes; who would take care of Elicia? Paninya wouldn't know any better than I would what to do, and Rose lives even farther away than Granny. Master Garfiel ... no._ She chewed the end of her fountain pen, then carefully printed the name of her last patient of the day. There was no need to feel abandoned; Ed had a lively circle of cronies at college, though most of them were his fellow surgical apprentices, as busy as he and generally a year or two younger. They hadn't been sure what to make of Winry at first: in the medical pecking order, surgeons ranked below physicians, but well above automail engineers (who in turn could condescend to dentists and midwives, who thanked _their _lucky stars for the existence of traveling quacksalvers and miracle men). Once she'd punctured the self-importance of a patronizing young man or two, however, the young women in the group had adopted her as their mentor. Winry had imbibed enough tea and confidences in the past twelve months to fill her mind as well as her bladder to bursting sometimes. She wondered if helping Mira and Tina find their feet in a man's world counted as practice for motherhood, and what they would think if they knew she needed it. _They'd be pleased for me, I guess,_ she thought as she recorded her patient's current height and weight. _Surprised, too, probably, but pleased._ She grimaced. _And the way they gossip, the whole city would know in three days._

She was anxious to avoid gossip, lest it get back to the clinic before she was ready to break the news to her employers. Messrs. Tate and Hare were a relatively new partnership, still building their reputation and clientele; they had hired Winry on the strength of her design credentials, but were reluctant to give her free rein to experiment. (_"Our patients aren't rich enough for fancy flourishes, Mrs. Elric." "Solid craftsmanship with a touch of elegance: that's the ticket!"_) On the other hand, they were quick to tout her successes, like the rebuild she'd done on the legs of the dour ex-soldier who worked as a stuntwoman in photoplays. Word-of-mouth about that job had brought other automailers from the cinema-theatrical community to the shop, along with the occasional free ticket to an opening. Everyone was quite pleased with such glamor-by-association: the receptionists had begun reading the trade weeklies so that they could chat knowledgeably about "the business," and stuffy Mr. Tate had unbent so far as to joke with Winry that they should advertise themselves as _The A-1 Automail Clinic -- Engineers to the Stars._ But if even Ed, who knew her well, had had to be persuaded that Winry could keep her job, how much harder would it be to convince her bachelor bosses that "mother" and "engineer" weren't mutually exclusive terms?

She laid her pen aside and rested both hands on her abdomen. _We'll be fine._ Granny always said that good work spoke for itself, after all. And as long as Winry didn't act sick, she couldn't be let go out of some misguided concern for her health. Every morning she checked her face in the mirror to make sure her cheeks weren't too pale or too hectic, practicing a confident smile until she felt as calm as her reflection looked. If nothing else, it kept Ed from fussing at her over breakfast. Winry sighed in remembered exasperation and the casement behind her mimicked the sound, cold air whistling in between frame and sash. She turned and tugged on the window until the noise faded, yet the chill seemed to linger. _At least it'll be warm when the baby comes,_ she thought, but couldn't quite believe it. Summer seemed so far off, but the baby was already here, growing inside her.

Winry settled back in her chair and propped an elbow on the desk, leaning her chin on her knuckles. When she and Ed had discussed having children, they'd talked a lot about always being there for them and teaching them to be as brave and smart and loving as their uncle and grandparents, and a little bit about wanting a house with lots of bookshelves and a big yard. _I thought we'd have more time to work out the details._ But heaven (or luck or their own bodies) had decreed otherwise, accomplishing what they'd barely begun to scheme, like the weather that overnight transformed the icicles twinkling on the eaves into stalactites as long and thick as the iron railings of the fire escape. Winry had caught Ed hacking them loose that very morning and dumping them into the alley with a crash like breaking glass. _What are you doing?_ she'd demanded.

_They're dangerous,_ he'd answered. _Someone could get hurt if they fell by accident --_

_So you're throwing them down on purpose? What if someone's taking out their trash?_

_I looked first, _he'd said, but his furtive glance downward had not been reassuring. _No one's there. Don't get all worked up about it._

_I am _not _getting worked up!_ she'd retorted, just as their left-hand neighbor launched an irritated fusillade of thumps into the common wall.

The greatest drawback to their apartment was not the cramped quarters, but the inability to deal with problems by having a good yell. Winry had swallowed the rest of her defense; Ed, less considerate, had slammed the window shut. _I'm gonna call the landlord and tell him the gutter's blocked again,_ he'd muttered, and made a great business of rolling down his shirt sleeves so as not to have to meet her eyes as he walked past. Winry had glowered at the wall instead and wondered how their neighbor would react to a crying baby.

_What if we have to move?_

The storm, tiring, stopped tossing sleet against the side of the building so that the diffident _tick-tick-tick_ of the wall clock could make itself heard. Winry bent over her notes, completed an abbreviated treatment summary, and scrawled her initials at the foot of the page. After briskly collating the sheets, she dropped them into the brimful wire basket atop the safe. It had been a busy day despite the foul weather, doubly so with Mr. Hare calling in sick. Winry and Mr. Tate had split between them those clients unwilling to reschedule their appointments; the coming days promised more of the same, since Mr. Hare was prone to bronchitis and had been coughing thunderously when he reported himself ill. Winry couldn't say she relished the extra work and longer hours -- _I miss my husband, even if he is a reckless idiot_ -- but it did emphasize that the practice had more than enough work for three engineers. _They have to realize that, at least,_ she thought as she picked up her bag and left the office. _And they won't find anyone as good as me so easily._ She turned the corner into the back hall, with its elderly, slanting staircase and pilled carpet, and snorted. _Not at the price they're willing to pay._

As she collected her coat and scarf from the closet beneath the stairs, Winry cast a dubious eye out the back door at the wet and gleaming steps. The alley had been salted and cleared a day or two ago, but negotiating that narrow, dark passage in a freezing rain shower held very little appeal. She wound the scarf twice around her neck, shrugged into her coat, and decided to use the front door. _I'll have to leave the chain off,_ she thought guiltily. _But as long as I'm the first one in tomorrow, no one will ever know._ Ed would grumble when she crawled out of bed half-an-hour early and left his breakfast warming on the stove instead of sitting down to eat with him properly, but she'd take his complaints over the likelihood of a wrenched knee or strained back in any weather. She grinned. Maybe she should tell her husband that his grumbling would carry more weight if he indulged in it less often.

She returned up the hall, putting out the lights behind her as she went. Her conscience was still muttering uneasily about the chain bolt when she arrived in the waiting room. A street-lamp shone dimly through the thin drapes drawn across the windows, outlining in broad, blurred strokes the chairs lined up against the walls and the low, square endtables in the corners. Winry paused to let her eyes adjust and heard the front doorknob rattle.

_Oh, no,_ she thought, as her conscience subsided into ironic silence. It wasn't unusual for clients to arrive after closing time and, filled with unreasonable hope, try door or bell, ignoring the sign which informed them of the clinic's hours and provided the telephone number of the answering service in case of emergency. The least hint of life within would have them peering through the windows and knocking on the glass until the door opened -- which, Winry admitted to herself, she was probably a little too willing to do. _But not tonight._ Not only Mr. Tate and Mr. Hare, but Ed too would disapprove of her seeing a patient, or someone claiming to be a patient, alone on a dark and stormy evening.

But the person standing on the stoop obviously wasn't a client, for Winry heard the snick and scrape of the lock releasing, and a chill draught blew damply into the room as the door opened to the meager limit of the chain. She frowned, but before she could do more than think how odd it was for precise Mr. Tate to forget that he couldn't enter through the front door after hours, a sharp blow to the panel tore the chain from its moorings. Winry stumbled back, one hand closing around the wrench in her coat pocket, the other scrabbling for the light switch.

The overhead fixture snapped on as the door swung wide to reveal a tall, heavily muscled man with grizzled dark hair, his right eye covered by a patch. He stepped across the threshold, catching the panel as it bounced off the wall and careened back toward him. With his other hand he brushed some damp snow from the shoulders of his duster and Winry heard the tell-tale clicks of low-grade automail as his elbow bent and straightened.

"Excuse me, miss," the man said, his tone making a grim joke of the courtesy. "I'm looking for someone named Elric."

"I'm she -- " Winry began automatically, before her shocked brain could rein in her tongue. _Idiot! He's a burglar! Get rid of him!_ She drew the wrench from her pocket and gripped it in both hands. "Get out of here," she said, putting all the authority she could summon into her voice, "before I call the police!"

His lips curling in a slow sneer, the man pushed the door shut behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

Edward Elric stomped the slush from his boots on the delicatessen's welcome mat as the bell jingled to announce him. The counterman looked up from his newspaper and smiled. "Evening, Ed," he said, folding the paper and laying it aside. "The usual?"

"Nah, just half-a-dozen dill pickles with the juice," Ed replied, breathing in the rich scent of mixed meats with no small regret. "I've got dinner waiting at home."

"Coming right up." The counterman wiped his hands on his apron and opened one of the small pickle barrels. "How about this weather, huh? You think maybe we've been annexed by Drachma and they forgot to tell us?"

_If we had been, I wouldn't be in here buying pickles_, Ed thought, but answered lightly, "As long as they don't outlaw spring."

"Hear, hear." The counterman filled a small, waxed-cardboard container with shiny, knobbly, yellow-green cucumbers, ladling a generous helping of vinegar over them. "That's one-fifty."

Ed groped in his pockets for coins and handed them across the deli case. "Thanks."

"Pleasure. Stay warm, eh?"

Ed waved the man his farewell and pushed back out into the raw, misty evening. It said something about the current state of Amestris that you couldn't even talk about the weather without the Drachmans popping up -- never mind that the latest cease-fire agreement with them appeared to be holding. Ed had refused to vote for President Grumman on principle (_c'mon, _Senator_ Mustang, get it in gear!_), but at least the twisty old general had repudiated his predecessor's militarism when he took up the mantle of power. _He got what he wanted: the whole country's his problem now. Not mine._ Amestris's uneasy relations with her neighbors north, south and west were merely the crabbed lees of a cup Ed had drained and left on the table seven years ago, in the last days of another life.

Rain began to needle down. Lacking an umbrella, Ed turned his collar up and pulled his cap low over his ears. _"Stay warm?" Ha. How about "dry"?_ The apartment hadn't been free of the reek of wet wool since before New Year's -- it seemed to have settled into the walls, and even throwing the windows open to air the place out for an arctic hour didn't shift the must. Ed took the pickles in his left hand and fisted his right in his coat pocket, rubbing his thumb back and forth across his tingling fingers. At times like these, flesh revealed its limits almost as painfully as automail did, and there wasn't much to pick between bad circulation and heat transfer as far as Ed was concerned. Winry, too, nagged him as unmercifully about cold hands and wet feet as she once had about maintaining her mechanical masterpieces. On the other hand, you had to prefer problems that could be solved with dry towels and hot tea, or a cuddle under the quilt ...

_( ... except that one thing leads to another ... )_

Ed quickly pulled his thoughts back from the edge of that sinkhole. Winry's pregnancy was Not A Problem: they'd agreed to that at the outset and he'd done his damnedest to act accordingly. _We have six months,_ she'd said. _If we start preparing now, we'll be ready then._ So they'd economized, laying by as much as they could of her salary and his pension against future need. That meant no more Saturday nights at the cinema-theater, no more dining out because they were too busy or too tired to cook. They brown-bagged their lunches like day-laborers and bought cheap cuts of meat to stew with cabbage and potatoes in water instead of milk. _Hey, poverty has its advantages._ But it wasn't enough and they both knew it, even if Winry was unwilling to admit it. _If she loses her job,_ Ed reflected grimly, _I'll have to leave school._

He'd raised the matter with her twice, but each time she'd brushed him off: _Granny kept my dad in a sling on her back while she worked; there's no reason I can't do the same._ But Pinako Rockbell had been mistress of her own shop at the time, not the wage-slave of a pair of star-struck mediocrities who valued her name above her talents. _("One of the Rockbells of Riesenbuhl! Do you mind if we mention that in our advertising?" Gah.) _Ed remembered his own first meeting with his wife's employers all too well -- he should've guessed that trouble lay ahead when he caught the eager glance they'd exchanged at the sight of him. The portly one had wrung his hand while the other gushed, "So pleased to meet you, Mr. Elric -- or should I say, 'The Fullmetal Alchemist'?"

"No," he'd replied, more bluntly than usual, just to watch the annoying gits deflate.

Winry had scolded him afterward -- _I work for these people, Ed! If you want to come pick me up at the clinic, you have to be polite to my bosses!_ -- but with more exasperation than heat. She understood what he meant when he denied his former title. If he had to, he explained that he'd renounced it on retiring from the military, but he preferred to say nothing at all. That was easier to do here in the west, where he and Al had traveled little, making few acquaintances to recognize the boy he had been in the man he now was. Even the legends helped: people looked for automail and saw an arm and leg of flesh; they expected an alchemist and met an apprentice surgeon. The name? Just one of those strange coincidences -- and they looked again, and doubted, and when they apologized, he could respond with platitudinous half-truths: _ I get that all the time; I was born back east and Elrics are thick on the ground there; sure, everybody's heard of the Fullmetal Alchemist ..._

_... but I'm not him anymore._

He'd slugged Al once, in the worst of the early bad days, for accusing him of trying to run away from himself. _ If I'd wanted to do that, I'd've changed my name and joined the Creatan merchant navy_. But he'd already known that was no answer and it was his brother who'd finally fled: to Xing, hoping that distance and the eastern kingdom's healing alchemy might cut the tangle of loss and guilt that bound them after their final encounter with the Truth.

Ed fidgeted with the pickles, tucking them into the crook of his elbow, then swapping them from hand to chilled hand. Of all the things he'd done on the Promised Day, that last transmutation was clearest in his memory, burned into his imagination like the afterimage of a carbon arc. He'd stood the hazard at the Doors over Al's objections and listened incredulously to a mocking voice tell him that he could have everything he wanted -- his brother's body, his own limbs, their great sin redeemed -- at what seemed in comparison a bargain price: the knowledge and the power and the glory of alchemy. _What's the catch?_ he'd demanded.

_Once burned, twice shy?_ The half-unseen figure had grinned at him. _No catch -- just equivalent exchange._

It was always difficult, in that featureless, echoless, obtundent no-place, to remember exigence, but the sight of Al's gaunt face and the memory of his soul's fraying bond to the physical world had been goad enough. _If he dies,_ Ed began, _I'll --_

The other held up a hand -- his own hand -- to cut him off. _It's not his death I want. Nor yours, alchemist._ The arm lowered and straightened, wrist turning to offer the palm. _So?_

So he'd taken the gamble and only rued it after, remembering too late that the house never pays out more than it collects. _Not your death_, indeed -- but what about his life?

Who was Edward Elric, if not the Fullmetal Alchemist?

Not his brother's keeper, though he'd helped nurse Al back to health with suffocating care. Not a soldier, and surely not a politician -- he'd spurned every reward urged upon him by representatives of his allegedly grateful nation (he'd've refused a pension, too, except that Lieutenant Hawkeye had threatened him with more paperwork than the gesture was worth). He'd made a good run at dog in the manger, belittling his brother's continued interest in alchemy until he'd driven Al away, all the while floundering in bitterness and confusion in which Winry's love and her parents' medical books had been his lifelines. Now all he regretted were the months wasted in funk and the pain he'd caused his family and his friends. _It's all right, Ed; I understand,_ Al had written from his new alchemic apprenticeship in Xing, and later, more trenchantly, _Quit apologizing, brother -- having your life turned inside out is a perfectly legitimate excuse for getting your head stuck up your ass._ Winry, reading that passage over Ed's shoulder, had giggled until he'd stopped her mouth by the pleasantest means available.

So he'd taken Al's advice and stopped apologizing, and taken Winry's hints and gotten married, and taken his own counsel and entered the Western College of Chirurgery, with the result that he felt himself a new man these days. A better man. Perhaps even a family man ... until Winry's announcement made him realize he'd always imagined testing his nascent maturity on a dog or cat first, and working up to actual children. _I'm not ready for this -- I'm not old enough to be someone's father!_ Hell, going by his own father's example, he was too young by a century or three -- not that he intended to take the old man for a model. _You'll never catch me running out on my kids._

An omnibus pulled up to the corner ahead of him. Holding a newspaper over her head, a single passenger jumped out the door and scuttled across the street, while the few people waiting at the curb shoved forward, barely recognizing the right of another woman, shopping bag in one hand and heavily-muffled child clinging to the other, to board first. Ed frowned as she yanked her burdens up the steep, slippery treads. He'd heard people say that however unready you thought you were, everything changed when you held the baby for the first time. Winry had reminded him how excited he'd been after she'd delivered Mrs. Lecourt's son: _All you could say was how awesome it was to see a new life brought into the world, remember?_ And Ed did remember it -- along with how useless he'd felt during the birth and how enormously relieved he'd been afterward that everyone had come through okay. _Besides, nobody was handing me the kid to keep._ Given the botch he'd made of raising himself and Al after their mother's death, nobody in their right mind would have trusted him with that responsibility.

Ed trudged on, wrinkling his nose at the fart of diesel exhaust from the omnibus as it lumbered away. At least he wouldn't be alone this time. He'd never leave Winry --_ and if she hasn't given me the boot by now,_ Ed thought wryly, _I'm not sure what I'd have to do to get rid of her_. They were in this parenthood thing together ... except that they weren't. Not exactly. Not when every discussion had to end with him agreeing that they had nothing to worry about. A shift in the wind blew sleet into Ed's face and he ducked, shaking his head and tucking the pickles back under his arm. Maybe it was easier for Winry, with their child developing cell by cell inside her, to accept what was happening. Maybe his view of childbirth was getting skewed by his medical training, as she'd once charged: after all, nobody called a surgeon to attend a laboring woman unless something had gone direly wrong.

Or maybe everything he'd seen and done in his search for the Philosopher's Stone had unfitted him for fatherhood, just like his old man.

Ed wiped the back of his hand across his mouth as he turned up Arch Street, momentarily shielded from the storm. It was easy to say _I'll never walk away from my children_ -- but what if it came to a choice between that and messing up their lives? When he lost his temper and picked a stupid fight with Winry, she gave as good as she got, but that was no way to treat a kid. _Damned if I'm going to raise my son -- or daughter -- to tiptoe around me like I'm picric acid,_ he promised himself defiantly.

_If you can help it,_ came the answer in a sly whisper.

Ed quickened his pace up the street toward the clinic. The sidewalk was empty but for him; this part of the city had few residences and its shops and offices closed early even in fine weather. He'd gotten into the habit of calling for Winry on his way back from the hospital if she were working late -- not because she needed the escort (or mostly not), but because the stroll home gave them a chance to exult or grumble over the day's events together in relative privacy. _Maybe tonight we can talk about the future._ He grimaced as the sleet turned briefly back into rain. _Or not._ No point in bookending the day with quarrels, not when he had a peace offering ready to underline his apology for the morning's blow-up. Winry claimed she wasn't having any odd cravings, but she also never turned down a sour pickle these days. And she'd been right about the icicles -- he'd been thinking less about how dangerous they could be if they fell and more about how occluded the view from the bedroom window had become. Hopefully she'd find it a lot harder to say _I told you so_ with her mouth full.

Meanwhile, nothing prevented Ed himself from mulling plans against the chances his wife refused to consider. The midwife guessed that Winry was almost four months along now; if they were lucky, the baby would be born at the beginning of summer, between terms. Ed had studied straight through last year's break in order to test out of sophomore physics and chemistry and into the first of his two "mixed years," when classes were supplemented with clinical assignments. His success had earned him the dubious privileges of carrying the scut bucket for every consultant to whom he'd been assigned and of being peppered on rounds with questions about everything but chemistry or physics. Ed scowled, kicking a loose chunk of ice into the wall of a shuttered shop, then shrugged. He'd gotten his own back a time or two, picking apart an ill-conceived inquiry, but he'd also recognized the gaps in his knowledge of surgical science and crammed furiously to fill them. If he had to, he could get a job tutoring struggling first- and second-years during the vacation, and if that didn't bring in enough cash, he'd deliver newspapers or mop floors.

_And if worst comes to worst, I'll tell her we have to go back east for a bit,_ he thought -- another resolution less troublesome to make than to keep. _She'll understand. She has to. There's the money -- and we can't have the old lady camping out in the apartment and all of us tripping over each other and the kid crying and ..._ He pulled the plug on that mental photoplay, reminiscent of too many hardship melodramas. _We just can't._

Even thinking the words left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Hopping a frozen puddle in the center of Bard Avenue, he caught sight of the A-1 Automail Clinic's facade, half a tall, narrow, yellow brick building with a flat roof and a street-level front door. He supposed that was what had recommended it to Winry's employers -- otherwise it was an unprepossessing example of West City's boom-town architecture, built fast, cheap, and just sturdy enough. A warm orange glow burned behind the closed curtains of the first-floor windows, and Ed slowed to check his watch. Twenty past seven -- normally the clinic closed at six. _Maybe they've got an emergency?_ But then why weren't the frosted panes of the upstairs surgery lit?

The left-hand window dimmed, then brightened again, as if something had passed between it and the lamp. Ed stopped altogether, staring uneasily at the clinic, and pulled his hands from his pockets. A darker shadow flitted across both casements, hesitating at the edge of the further one, then ballooned to block the lower sash before it disappeared, sending an agitated ripple through the folds of drapery.

_Oh, _hell _no!_

Ed dashed across the street, the worn soles of his boots skidding as he leaped the berm of grit-encrusted frozen slush edging the opposite sidewalk, but he threw himself forward and rammed his shoulder into the door. It burst open, offering no resistance, and he windmilled frantically to keep from faceplanting into the floorboards. "Winry!" he shouted.

She stood in the center of the sparsely furnished waiting room, straining in the grip of a muscle-bound, one-eyed thug with a knife at her throat. One arm was twisted up behind her back, the other pinioned between her body and his. Evidence of the struggle Ed had seen from outside was all around them in the crooked drapes and the rucked-up carpet and the gouge out of the plaster where no doubt a thrown wrench had struck. Winry was breathing in little gasps; her hair had come unpinned on one side to half-shroud her face.

"Get away from my wife!" Ed snarled.

The knife glinted as the man's fingers tightened on the haft. "Shut that door," he countered in a slow, gravelly voice. "Were you raised in a barn?"

"Yeah, and every time I hear a jackass, I get homesick!" Ed retorted.

The man didn't answer, but pushed the top fold of Winry's scarf down with the flat of his blade to expose a little more of her neck. Her breath caught, and Ed, glowering, kicked the door to behind him. _Dammit! Why does this neighborhood have to roll up its sidewalks so early?_ "What do you want?" he demanded aloud. "Who are you?"

The big man's jaw worked, as if he were chewing on something distasteful. "You don't remember?" he asked, and when Ed made no reply, he continued with a humorless smile, "I guess that's the way it goes. Ask for the Fullmetal Alchemist, and they try to sell you a pack of fairy-tales and nonsense. Ask for Edward-fucking-Elric, they send you to a sawbones's office. Ask for Blue Squad -- " He shrugged, and Winry's eyes widened as the knife-edge scraped her skin.

"Let. Her. Go," Ed grated out.

The man shook his head. "I don't think so."

Ed's hands squeezed the pickle carton until it bent. He couldn't just charge in and kick the smirking bastard in the head. He had to think -- damn it all, he had to get Winry out of here so he could break every single one of the goon's filthy phalanges, proximal to distal --

_Patience, Fullmetal,_ Roy Mustang lectured him out of the distant past, superior and maddeningly correct. _A hostage situation is inherently unstable. Wait for the moment when the balance tips in your favor; then strike._

Ed mentally flipped his erstwhile commanding officer the bird. _As if you ever did anything but wait for me and Al to strike and then swan in afterward to take all the cred- -- oh, shit!_ "You're that guy from the train!" he blurted out, as memory sketched a mustache and beard on the man's clean-shaven rectangular jaw and pointed chin. "The terrorist!"

His opponent nodded. "You do remember. Good."

"Why the hell aren't you still in prison?"

Ed's indignation amused the other man; his smile widened and he actually chuckled. "The amnesty."

"You? How the -- how -- ?" Ed sputtered, almost choking with rage at the terrorist's pious grin. Grumman had sold the the amnesty for political prisoners to the Amestrian public as _a gesture to heal the wounds of civil strife still fresh in the memory of our nation,_ but it was supposed to cover people jailed for printing subversive pamphlets or failing to bribe corrupt officials, not anyone who'd committed a real crime, like hijacking and murder. _Is this some kind of bureaucratic screw-up,_ Ed wondered, unease abruptly tempering his anger, _or is somebody holding this guy's leash?_ "What do you want?" he asked again.

The man's mocking geniality sharpened into bloodthirsty anticipation. "You," he said. "Dead."

"Fine!" Ed shot back. "Let Winry go."

_"No!"_ she screamed.

Her captor twisted her arm savagely in reply. "Shut up!" he growled when she blanched and squealed. "And you, back off!" he added, as Ed took an involuntary step forward. "You don't want her throat slit before yours, you keep real still, Mr. Fullmetal Alchemist."

_I'm not him anymore!_ And he hadn't regretted it this deeply for a good five years, though even his cocksure adolescent self would have balked at a threat to Winry. She'd always been his weakness. But no one who drew her into a scheme against him ever triumphed by it -- he'd always seen to that. _This fucker's going down hard,_ he promised his wife silently, trying to will her confidence from his own depleted store. All he needed was a little time to come up with a plan. _Gotta keep him jawing._ "Why do you want to kill me?" he asked, partly at random, partly in search of a handle on his unaccountable opponent. "I thought you guys -- Blue Squad -- were supposed to be freedom fighters. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not running the country!"

"I need the practice," the terrorist replied. "Seven years inside, and you can get a little rusty."

"Practice for what?" Ed countered. Maybe he could get the man to uncork his entire plot, cinema-villain-style. "You don't overthrow governments one slit throat at a time!"

"Government?" The thug hawked and spat, missing Winry's right foot by centimeters. "Who gives a shit about the government? I want you dead -- you and that fat judge and your lah-dee-dah boss."

_My boss?_ For a moment Ed could only gape at the idea of the arrogant consultant to whose condescending lectures he'd been subjected for the past month as a terrorist target. _Who the hell -- ?_ "Mustang?" he exclaimed. "He'd char you before you got within ten feet!"

"Like I said, I need the practice," snarled the other. "I figured I'd start -- " his derisive glance measured Ed from sole to crown -- "small."

Ed bristled, baring his teeth in an answering snarl. "Yeah? And what's the point?"

"'The point?'" repeated the terrorist sarcastically. "'The point?' What d'you _think?_"

"I think you're an ass!" Ed snapped, as exasperation shredded his grip on his ire. "The East is rebuilding, whatever's left of your movement is rotting in jail, and you decide to come after me and Mustang and -- and some other guy?" He threw up his arms and the pickles sloshed about noisily. "What are you getting out of this? Company in hell? Is that it?" He pointed a finger straight at the man's face. "Well, you can save yourself the trouble -- I guarantee it's already full of pricks like you -- "

_"Shut up!"_ The man's eye seemed bulge in his head as he shouted; Winry flinched and he pressed the knife with distracted menace to her windpipe. "You don't know anything about it!"

Ed bit his tongue. _Softly, softly,_ Mustang's remembered voice advised him. _You want to bore him to death, not slay him with your rapier wit --_

The terrorist drew a hissing breath through his long nose. "Maybe I don't care about the East anymore," he went on, "or about those jugheads back in the clink. Maybe I never did. Maybe all I'll get after killing you is a good night's sleep. Maybe all I_ want _-- " he threw the word back at Ed with venomous emphasis -- "is to see _you_ in hell!"

Ed's eyes met Winry's, and he could see what it was costing her not to tremble or scream again. He was all but shaking himself from the adrenalin rush, his body demanding that he do something, _anything_, while his brain considered and discarded option after option. He settled for shifting as unobtrusively as he could into a ready stance, but the terrorist's eye, attending to his movements with homicidal intensity, tracked the change in his posture and narrowed suspiciously.

His single eye.

_The bullseye._

The pickle container trembled againts his damp palm. _No, don't give it away -- wait for it -- _ Frowning, the thug rubbed the flat of his blade across Winry's neck; her gaze flicked from Ed's face to his and back again. Ed froze and said, as plaintively as he could, "You don't need to do this."

The man made a show of considering that, his features pulled into an expression of mock thoughtfulness that didn't suit them. "You know what?" he answered. "I think I do. Get down on the ground!"

It was almost a relief to hear him say it, to know that the moment to strike was now or never. Almost. Ed exchanged a long look with the hulking terrorist -- then slowly, as if unwillingly, he dropped to one knee, grasping the pickles in both hands like an ambassador of far-off days ready to present a humble gift. The unwillingness wasn't tough to fake, conscious as he was of gambling with two -- no, three lives. Ed let the other man stare him down and caught a glimpse of his opponent's premature triumph as he bowed his head, thumbs slipping under the flaps that folded across the top of the waxed-cardboard cube.

_Three, two, one --_

"Ed, no!" Winry cried out. She began to struggle again, kicking back against her captor's shins, heedless of the blade at her throat -- or perhaps calculating, as Ed had, that the threat which held him in check ended with her life. The man damned her with inarticulate grunts and yanked her arm so that she shrieked, spine arching. Ed's head snapped up in time to see the knife score a wet, red line across the skin above Winry's collarbone.

He felt the shock of the cut in his own body, like a lash of cold water thrown up by the wheels of a passing omnibus. The pickle container popped open to release a tart, bracing smell. The thug hauled Winry back against him, shifting his grip, and yelled at Ed, "Down! Face down, now!"

Ed bent his neck again -- one last deceptive gesture -- and sprang, flinging the pickles into his adversary's face.

The terrorist howled and recoiled as the vinegar doused his uncovered eye. Ed grabbed the man's right wrist and yanked the knife away from Winry, pulling left as she spun right. His fingers dug for the nerve in the flesh and found it; the man bellowed again as his hand spasmed opened and let the knife clunk to the floor. Ed kicked it away and blocked his opponent's first wild swing. The goon wiped his reddened, squinting eyeball clear; he shook off Winry, now attempting clumsily to encumber him from behind, and threw a left hook at Ed's head. Ducking, Ed countered, landing a body blow, but it was like punching a sack of wet sand. _Has this guy got an Armstrong up his family tree?_

He leaped back and the two men began to circle each other, feinting. Ed repressed the useless impulse to seize a lamp or curtain rod and transmute it into a spear. _Work with what you've got, dammit! _ His opponent had the advantage of him in weight and wingspan; Ed needed to draw him out, sucker the thug into overreaching and turn all that mass against him -- or, failing that, at least clear a path to the door so that Winry could escape. _Where is she?_ He risked a swift survey of the room and glimpsed his wife on her hands and knees in front of the receptionist's counter in an attitude that made his blood run cold. _Her neck? Is she sick? Oh, shit, not the baby -- _

His attention strayed from his adversary for a moment too long, and in that distracted instant the big man charged, breaking straight through Ed's belated defense and slamming him bodily into the wall beside the front door. Ed felt the plaster give behind his skull and shoulders, heard the laths crack; his opponent's hands closed around his throat and his vision tunneled as he clawed at the hold. "Now you're dead!" the terrorist grunted, his voice barely audible over the thunder dinning in Ed's ears, but that couldn't be true --

_-- they all say that and it's never true --_

_-- never, never, never, never --_

-- and then the other's grip slackened as the hate-filled eye boring into his lost focus. Twisting, Ed broke free of the chokehold and threw all his strength into a uppercut to the big man's jaw. The terrorist's head rebounded on his neck and he dropped to the ground in a lopsided heap, just shy of a pair of black leather pumps that skipped back to avoid being crushed.

Ed blinked to clear his sparkling vision and recognized the shoes as Winry's. She jigged from foot to foot before him, wrench raised to strike -- no, to strike again, he realized, correlating her high color and rapid breathing with his own hairbreadth escape. _Never count out a Rockbell of Riesenbuhl_, he thought giddily. _Advertise that, you morons!_

Winry prodded the inert body on the carpet with her left toe, none too gently; when it failed to respond, she tried in vain to kick it aside. Ed chuckled between gulps of air and his wife, pocketing her weapon, stepped over their fallen foe and into his arms.

They sagged together against the wall. Ed flinched as a broken lath dug into his side and Winry's caresses immediately turned clinical, investigating his head and neck for damage. "Are you all right?" they asked each other.

With a not quite hysterical giggle Winry nodded and drew away, her hands dropping to his ribs while he tugged the blood-stained scarf away from the wound in her throat. "It's only a scratch," she said, forestalling his concern. "Does this hurt?"

"Not really," Ed answered automatically. His torso was one massive, undifferentiated ache at the moment, sure to blossom into some spectacular bruises over the next week, but as he took careful deep breaths at her direction, he felt none of the stabbing pains that would have indicated a broken rib. _Small favors._ He wanted to ask her about the baby in return, but the question seemed to imply disaster and she looked merely strained, not ill. So he cupped her cheek with his right hand, trying to smooth away the corvid tracks of anxiety in her skin, and she closed her eyes and leaned gratefully into his palm. "Ow!" he yelped as a new smart lanced up his forearm. "I think I sprained my wrist! -- No, leave it," he added, eluding her gentle fingers. "We've got to hogtie this bastard first and then call the cops."

He should have expected that a length of the bandage roll Winry fetched to secure their prisoner would wind up around his arm anyway; his wife was nothing if not persistent. The suggestion that he might be too badly injured to help, however, was simply insulting. "It's a _sprain_, Winry -- and I can tie one-handed knots, you know," he complained as she pinned the dressing. "I'm training for a surgeon. And what about your neck?"

"This isn't an operating theater, Ed," she retorted, unreeling another several feet of material. "Fine. You get his legs; I'll do his arms."

"Once you've taken care of your neck," Ed insisted as he took the length of gauze from her.

She sighed, dug a sticking plaster out of her toolbag, and slapped it across the deepest part of the wound. "There. That's good enough for now." Avoiding his dissatisfied gaze, she took her scissors and proceeded to cut the terrorist's left sleeve open to reveal the automail underneath.

"You're not giving him a free tune-up, are you?" Ed couldn't help but ask.

She ignored this weak sally, instead rooting another wrench from the bag. Ed gave up for the moment and busied himself with hobbling the terrorist's thick ankles while Winry unbolted and removed his prosthetic's shoulder plating. With a tight, smug smile she disconnected the control junction at the ball joint. "That'll hold _you_," she muttered.

"Make sure there aren't any fancy surprises," Ed warned her. "Last time he had a knife hidden in there."

"I don't think so," Winry answered, but she pried off the forearm grille to check. "This is a standard-issue prosthetic, not custom-made. It's a lot like the models the government has been supplying to veterans since the war." She began rebolting the plates she had removed. "It doesn't look like it's been modified -- it hasn't even been that well maintained," she added with a disdainful sniff.

"Just a lone nut, then," Ed concluded, snagging the unused bandage roll and tethering the terrorist's flesh arm to his automail with a double gunner's knot. _Unless -- no._ "Anybody with connections as well as a grudge would have come better equipped." He leaned over to poke their unconscious-seeming adversary in the kidneys and was rewarded with a faint groan. "Saphead."

He half-expected Winry to call him either on the poke or on his analysis -- the saphead had nearly taken him out unassisted, after all -- but she packed up her kit and rose, frowning. "I'll call the police," she said. "You keep an eye on him. Yell if he stops breathing or has a seizure."

Ed opened his mouth to harass her into taking care of her own wound first, but the slight wobble in her gait as she made her way across the rumpled carpet to the hall door dissuaded him from continuing. The cut was long but thankfully shallow -- time enough to dress it properly after she had phoned the authorities, when there was nothing to do but wait and think. She'd welcome the distraction then. With luck he could keep her arguing about the need for stitches until the cops arrived; their questions would give her plenty to occupy her mind.

He picked idly at the constricting gauze around the base of his thumb and considered the terrorist again. His presence here was a puzzle, or maybe a warning. The more Ed thought about it, the less able he was to sustain his glib dismissal of the man: he couldn't have been that stupid, not if he'd tracked the Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward-fucking-Elric, all the way here. Ed's low public profile since the Promised Day was ably abetted by those members of the government sensible enough to judge the uncannier aspects of that unsettled period best forgotten. They also kept him under oh-so-casual surveillance in case he hatched belatedly into a monster. Falman, now a colonel in internal security, sent the Elrics a polite card each winter at New Year's; until today, Ed hadn't given up hope of boring him to death.

"Thanks a lot, jerk," he muttered to the terrorist.

A lamp clicked on in the receptionist's office. Looking up, Ed saw Winry lift the black handset to her ear and begin dialing. She'd straightened her coat and blouse and tied her hair back, and he was suddenly, fiercely glad to have the high wooden counter dividing her from him and the thug at his feet. He didn't begrudge the professional success that made her, for the moment, the better-known Elric, but he'd never imagined it putting her on the front lines in his place. Hell, he thought they'd quit the field years ago. As for their adversary, he'd walked out of prison with the customary pocketful of cens and get-a-job suit, his record cleared and his arm refurbished into the bargain. _You could've gone anywhere, done anything,_ Ed thought with uneasy contempt. _ So why'd you have to come here?_

He made certain that Winry was intent on her conversation, then kicked his captive where it was least likely to leave a mark.


End file.
